Vicarious Catharsis

Tears trace a lonely path down
The cold, misted glass.
Vetro dello spirito
 Their tracks mingling with each other,
Painting visions of surreal terror.
They stream down, and cast shadows
On the flickering gas light.

And still the rain falls down.

Drops drum a complex rhythm-beat,
Echo in my head.
Feel the chill of a storm brewing
Within, as without.
It’s raining outside, inside it’s raining.

Parchment and paper; ink and pens
Become witness to these outpourings
While outside, the wind lashes.
Screaming a tortured oath to its God.
Sublime in its suffering.
Ravages my windowpane.

And its pain, exorcises mine.

Imagination

I struggle for Beauty.
Ironic, perhaps,

For Beauty is supposed to be effortless.

Beauty burns.

Passionately undulating, freely flowing,

All consuming, and enchanting.

Like the silver dew drops in maiden’s eye,

As she perceives her lover pursue another.

Effortless…

As she learns of his scarlet death, 

Pursuing honor on the battlefield.

As she learns to desire another…

Burning…

… as she lies on her white satin bed sheets, 

under a guiltless white moon.

Her children next to her, adrift in innocent sleep

She hungers for a forbidden blood-love

Her eyes like twin feverish sapphires,

Her skin like blazing porcelain,

Her breaths short inhalations of madness,

Her dreams, humid visions of insatiable frenzy.

Passionately undulating…

Freely flowing…

Beauty.

Subtle, yet blinding in its intensity.

All consuming…

Moving in its reach and breadth

Enchanting.

…

Yet overcome by these grey, quotidian monoliths

Of boxed melancholy,

I learn to compromise.

And live a dusty, reined in Reality.

To awake, only when I sleep.

To live, only when I dream.